Nairobi, Kenya’s Viwandani is an informal village that is referred to as a “slum” by the locals. It is an electoral ward in Nairobi County’s Makadara Constituency. The Nairobi Industrial Area is its neighbor. In Kiswahili, the term “Viwandani” translates to “at the industrial zone”. Within the settlement are thirteen “villages”: Paradise A, B, and C, Riverside, Sinai, Sinali Reli, Tetrapak, Uchumi, Jamaica, Kingstone, Lunga Lunga Center, Lunga Lunga Donholm, Milimani, and Uchumi.
The Nairobi Urban Health and Demographic Surveillance System (NUHDSS), run by the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC) since 2002, includes Viwandani as one of its two informal settlements. The NUHDSS gathers information on health outcomes (morbidity, cause of death through verbal autopsy, child immunization, and nutrition), socioeconomic outcomes (marriage, education, livelihood, and housing characteristics), and demographic events (births, deaths, and migrations). Several research publications that are indexed on the APHRC website come from it. (Korogocho is the other informal settlement that is part of NUHDSS.)